We welcomed poets Leah Umansky & Melissa Fite Johnson to The Notebooks Collective to celebrate their new books on May 14, 2024. They talked about their love of pop culture, forms, how they cultivate their writing practice, and more.
“What does it mean to live in a country at war with itself–historically, spiritually, politically? Where does this sickness originate? In poems both personal and sweeping in scope, Umansky opens the door to all the possible answers, pointing outward but also in, to the twists and turns of our collective psyche.”
“Midlife Abecedarian is a nostalgic collection that takes the reader on a journey through time. It provides a template for a life well-lived, even if you’re only halfway through. Conjuring memories and a sense of satisfaction and comfort, Midlife Abecedarian is a map to things remembered and things best left forgotten.”
Rivka and I have a unique bond as poets and co-editors. We met in 2012, during Rivka’s first and my last year in the MFA program at UMKC. Before, during and after we formed Bear Review, we’ve shared work and encouraged one another. This sharing and cheering each other on, discussing craft and aesthetics, swapping and giving books with and to each other has led, in some ways directly and in others indirectly, to our creating Bear Review. While co-editing Bear Review, we learned each of our appetites and affinities moved us to appreciate poets from very different parts of the contemporary U.S. poetic fractal. Rivka’s aesthetic choices often led us to accepting more avant garde / experimental poems, which I appreciated or learned to appreciate, while mine led us to poems expressive of personal experiences. I can only speak for myself, but I definitely noticed Rivka’s tastes making an impression on me, in particular her brave embrace of the surreal, abject and grotesque.
Rivka
When I met Marcus, I saw poetry as a way to escape my body. I didn’t know the term dysphoria then, but poetry was a way for me to be other than what I was. When I read Marcus’ poetry, I admired how deeply he looked into his own life, how he was unafraid to face it. The more medical transitioning has aligned my body with my self-image, the less I feel compelled to run away through poetry, the more compelled I feel to see my experience as continuous with my self as a writer and artist. Marcus has always been a teacher for me in that regard; his poems laid the groundwork for me to be more autobiographical. Poetry feels most itself when it lands somewhere between autobiography and completely disconnected from the writer’s life. I believe having this conversation around aesthetics, subject matter and poetic arcs will be help clarify things for me as a trans writer and may be beneficial for other writers thinking through their aesthetics as well.
This event is Free, with a suggested donation of $5.
Marcus Myers lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where he teaches and serves as co-founding and managing editor of Bear Review. Author of the chapbook Cloud Sanctum (2022), his poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Common, Contemporary Verse 2, The Florida Review, Fourteen Hills, The Los Angeles Review, Mid-American Review, RHINO, Salt Hill, Southeast Review, and elsewhere.
Rivka Clifton
Rivka Clifton is the author of Muzzle (JackLeg Press) as well as the chapbooks MOT and Agape (from Osmanthus Press). She has work in: Pleiades, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, and other magazines.
We were so honored to host Portland, OR writers Jennifer Perrine and Jen Shin in October. After their reading, they delved into healing modalities, grief, writing and the body, and more. Please enjoy the event!
This is new for us at The Notebooks Collective. We’ve never hosted an artist before. We’re doing so tonight because Shu and Trish have collaborated on an exhibit that’s currently on display at the Hamilton Grange Library in New York City. Titled In a Garden of Small Dreams, Art + Poetry in Conversation, the exhibit is a study in collaboration, concision, and compromise in the best possible way.
It’s also about the blossoming of a friendship that started with a shared love of, well, gardens. And art. And words and the worlds we can enter when we speak to each other through art, through poetry, through the beauty and shine of life, the fear and underbelly of the darkness we all sometimes feel.
As individual creatives, Trish and Shu are accomplished, focused, fiercely loyal to their respective crafts. As collaborators, they learned to speak yet another language, one in which they learned to listen to and see each other not just as friends, but as artists with something to say. Together, they said those things in a way they may not have have, had they not accepted an invitation from Isaac Sorell at Hamilton Grange Library to display their work as an ekphrastic exhibit.
And this is why they’re here tonight: to talk about the genesis of this collaboration, how they worked together, what they learned from one another and how their friendship changed–or didn’t–through the process.
We were so honored to host Mark Turcotte and Suzanne Frank, two poets who have known each other over 40 years. They read from their collected works and discussed the importance of friendship and community in the writing life.
Poets and essayists Michael Kleber-Diggs and Danusha Laméris will read from their collected works and discuss the writing life. Learn more about these poets in the bios below.
About Michael Kleber-Diggs
Michael Kleber-Diggs (KLEE-burr digs) (he / him / his) is currently writing a memoir about his complicated history with lap swimming called My Weight in Water (forthcoming with Spiegel & Grau). He is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in Literature, a poet, essayist, literary critic, and arts educator. His debut poetry collection, Worldly Things (Milkweed Editions 2021), won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, the 2022 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Poetry, the 2022 Balcones Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award. Michael’s essay, “There Was a Tremendous Softness,” appears in A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey (Milkweed Editions, 2023). His poems and essays appear in numerous journals and anthologies. Michael is married to Karen Kleber-Diggs, a tropical horticulturist and orchid specialist. They are proud of their daughter who recently graduated from SUNY Purchase with a BFA in Dance Performance with a Concentration in Composition. Photo credit: Ayanna Muata
About Danusha Laméris
Danusha Laméris, a poet and essayist, was raised in Northern California, born to a Dutch father and Barbadian mother. Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry,The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and recipient of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, and is currently on the faculty of Pacific University’s low residency MFA program. Her third book, Blade by Blade, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.
Poet Tricia Bogle and Artist Shu Tu will discuss their current ekphrastic exhibit, In a Garden of Small Dreams: Art + Poetry in Conversation, at the Hamilton Grange branch of the New York Public Library. Learn more about this poet and artist in the bios below.
Shu Tu has earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Parsons School of Design and studied fashion accessories at the Cordwainers, London College of Fashion. For over 25 years, she held positions as a creative director and leader in the advertising and beauty industries. In recent years, she has expanded her work as an artist. This journey has enabled her to produce deeply personal work that communicates her story through multiple mediums, including traditional and digital art, floral arrangement, ceramics, and metalsmithing.
Shu is currently residing in Upper Manhattan. You might often spot her in the company of her children, Ander and Percy, engaging in the silliest conversations and sharing the wildest laughter.
Tricia Bogle (Trish) has called NYC home since 1991. She holds a BA in Creative Writing & Philosophy from Loyola Baltimore, and an MA and PhD (in Political Theory and Philosophy) from Fordham University. For over two decades, she taught advanced courses in Writing, Philosophy, Bioethics, Political Science, and Great Books at various institutions, including Montclair State University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Fordham University, and the Johns Hopkins University CTY program.
In recent years she has expanded her work as a poet, exploring many of the same themes through poetry that engaged her for decades as an academic philosopher. Trish currently lives and writes in Washington Heights, and can often be spotted in Highbridge Park, watching the sunrise over the Bronx while sipping café con leche and reading translations of Basho out loud to the trees.
Poets Mark Turcotte and Suzanne Frank will read from their collected works and discuss the importance of friendship and community in the writing life. Learn more about these poets in the bios below.
Bonus: Each poet has graciously offered to gift one signed copy of their book to an attendee! Anyone who asks/chats a question during the Q&A segment of the program will be eligible to be randomly selected to receive either a signed copy of Exploding Chippewas by Mark Turcotte or Double Vision: Reflections on the Coastal Forest and the City We Love by Suzanne Frank and Angela Just.
Writer Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Band Anishinaabe) is author of four collections, including The Feathered Heart and Exploding Chippewas. His poetry and prose have appeared in TriQuarterly, POETRY, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review and other journals, and is included in the first Norton Anthology of Native Nations poetry. He has been the recipient of awards from the Lannan Foundation and the Wisconsin Arts Board. He lives in Chicago where he is Distinguished Writer-In-Residence in the English Department at DePaul University.
About Suzanne Frank
Suzanne Frank has been writing and reading her poetry in Chicago for over 30 years. She has been a Chicago Poetry Slam team finalist, a two-time Puchcart Prize nominee, and her work has been published in many poetry journals and anthologies, including Sow’s Ear, Another Chicago Magazine, Stray Bullets, Power Lines, Appleseeds Anthology of Americana Poetry, Birds Thumb, HAMMERS Magazine, and Arts Alive: A Literary Review.
She has featured in poetry venues across the city, from the infamous Green Mill Lounge to Printers Row Book Fair to the Guild Literary Complex where she directed and performed in the Women in Verse poetry cabaret. She completed, with writer Angela Just, a residency at Shotpouch Cabin in the Oregon Coast Range, granted by Oregon State University’s Center for Ideas, Nature and the Written Word, which resulted in the publication of their chapbook of poems, prose and photographs, Double Vision (2019). Most recently, her collection of travel poems, All On the Same Blue Planet, was featured in Nowhere Magazine. Currently, Suzanne is finalizing a poetry collection, Woundwood, that gives voice to women whose lives were hijacked in the 1960s when flower children and free love collided with puritanical laws, unreliable birth control and backstreet abortions.
She has been writing with the Egg Money Poetry Collective for over 15 years.
What a joy to host three poets who know and love each other’s work. Poet Ellen Austin-Li moderated a beautiful conversation between Sara Moore Wagner and Pauletta Hansel, where they touched on persona and masks, cultural heritage, mentorship, and more.
On April 23, we invited Mark & May-Lan to be in conversation about their writing and friendship. They are champions of each other’s work and you can hear it in this conversation.
